Moscow charges American with espionage
Man long has used social media to talk with Russian people
MOSCOW — Russian authorities have brought espionage charges against a U.S. citizen, Paul Whelan, who if convicted faces a prison sentence of as much as 20 years, said his lawyer, Vladimir Zherebenkov.
Whelan, whose arrest was announced Monday, is being held in solitary confinement in the notorious Lefortovo Prison here.
The head of global security for the Michigan auto parts maker BorgWarner, Whelan, 48, has emerged as a curious figure in the days since his arrest. A former Marine who was courtmartialed for several misdeeds, including larceny and passing bad checks, he has been traveling to Russia since at least 2006.
Whelan’s family said he had been in Russia to attend the wedding of a friend from the Marines who was marrying a Russian woman at the storied Metropol Hotel.
He was familiar to numerous Russians who have known him or interacted with him on social media over the past decade. They said he seemed to pop up every six months or so and enjoyed traveling around Russia, especially by train. Not all of them met him in person, so it remained unclear how often he had visited.
Unusually for an occasional visitor to Russia, Whelan had an account on Vkontakte, the Russian version of Facebook, for about a decade. The account showed that he was last active at 4:55 p.m. Dec. 28, the day the Federal Security Service, Russia’s domestic security and intelligence agency, said he was arrested.
Rosbalt, a Russian news agency close to the security service, quoted an unidentified intelligence source Wednesday as saying it was considered odd that Whelan did not use the social media site to try to meet women. Rather, he sought to ingratiate himself into the lives of his contacts on the site.
A quick survey of those contacts indicated that most seemed to be men with some sort of connection to academies run by the Russian Navy, the Defense Ministry or the Civil Aviation Authority.
There has been widespread speculation that Russia seized Whelan to exchange him for Maria Butina, a Russian citizen jailed in the United States. Butina, 30, pleaded guilty Dec. 13 in U.S. District Court in Washington to conspiring to act as a foreign agent. She admitted to being involved in an organized effort, backed by Russian officials, to lobby influential Americans in the National Rifle Association and the Republican Party.
She faces six months in prison, most likely followed by deportation. An espionage conviction in Russia carries a sentence of 10 to 20 years.
Russia has denied that Butina acted in any official capacity. While there is no apparent connection between her case and Whelan’s, Russia has a history of arresting foreigners to exchange them for its citizens held elsewhere.
Zherebenkov, Whelan’s lawyer, said he would welcome an exchange but that it would take time. The shortest timetable for the legal case would be six months to a year, he said, after which the issue of an exchange might be broached.
Rosbalt’s intelligence source said Whelan had been apprehended during a meeting with a Russian citizen in his room at the Metropol. He is accused of trying to recruit this person to obtain classified information about staff members at various Russian agencies, the account said.
Whelan was arrested five minutes after receiving a USB stick containing a list of all the employees at a classified security agency, the report said.
Zherebenkov said he had not seen all the evidence but that he suspected that the American had been under surveillance for some time.